Alas, good readers, the time has come to take the last pumpkin coach home from that glamorous land known as the Manolosphere. I will miss you all, even if you never DID enter the caption contests. Think of me when you snark on the Kardashians and the spirit of Ayyyy will never die.

Is the preppy hiker type your thing? Jake Gyllenhaal has you covered. So to speak.

Having recently moved to an ecovillage (don’t laugh! okay, maybe a little) in the rainforest of the west coast, my selection of men has become somewhat limited. Basically, there are hippies, there are preppy hikers, there are a handful of billionaires whom I will never meet because they are helicoptered into and out of their estates, and there are fishermen who drink. The preppy hikers smell the best, but the hippies are the most fun. Jake Gyllenhaal here demonstrates both iterations of manly outdoorsiness. Preppy hiker above, ecohippie below. Scissors are oppressive, man!

Jake Gyllenhaal in hippie hiker mode

I’m normally a fan of the long hair, but now that I know it generally comes with associated smells woven in, I’m less enthusiastic. Which would you rather?

I can never decide if I’m an 80’s girl (DuranDuran makes my skin crawl, but I adore early Madonna and U2) or a 90’s girl (U2 again, Nirvana, and the post-punk scene), but Twin Peaks is certainly greater than anything the 80’s ever came up with (I mean, Dynasty?). And it was 25 years ago today that Laura Palmer died, kicking off the whole mysterious boondoggle, inspiring many, many more.

From the equally mysterious Gawker Dating site comes this anonymous posting…

Diane, I really need some help on this one.

No, I’m not stuck in the Black Lodge or possessed again. I’m just starting to get lonely on my endless assignment in this weird, remote place.

Sometimes I’m romantically pursued by teenagers, or else I fall for convent-bound types. But what I really need is someone who can appreciate a slice of cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee.

Do you know anyone like that, Diane? Because at this point I’m totally willing to relocate.

#m4w
#gawkerdating

20110503

Surely somewhere out there is a woman who just likes a slice of cherry pie and a damn fine cup of coffee…Volunteers to the left.

Not too long ago I was trawling through this very blog, replacing now-deleted YouTube videos, and I came across this awesome cover of “To Love Somebody” by Michael Buble. Bublé. Sorry, Mike.

Yes, I call him Mike. We’re likethis, I tell ya.

No, we aren’t. But we used to work together, so let me tell you an exclusive story about Michael Bublé, from the days when he was just an embittered aspiring entertainer by night, embittered experienced barista by day. The looks he throws in that video remind me of him back then. Because (sigh) he used to look at me that way.

100% bullshit free.

He used to work at the Pacific Centre Starbucks in downtown Vancouver, a seriously busy location with a clientele of stockbrokers and high-powered financial types who had no time to shoot the breeze or hang around chatting with the barista about his Other Life (Everyone at Starbucks has an Other Life; one of their district managers sings opera and in fact toured Japan in Aida, and let me tell you it helps a long night of inventorying along when he busts out the Mozart). So there wasn’t a lot of communal goodwill swirling about the shop, and the people working there tended to be more stressed and less happy than baristas in other stores. They’ve since redesigned it so it’s much more conducive to sitting and talking, but at the time it was a pretty industrial-looking takeout, high volume coffee stop and that’s it.

I was there picking up some spare shifts. I was notorious for picking up extra work anywhere, everywhere, and routinely received talkings-to about it, because a barista working at time and a half or double time or even (once, gloriously) triple time costs a lot, but then they’d never hire enough staff to cover all those shifts, so they had to let me take them or just give up on the money to be made.

I always liked working Pacific Centre, and for only one reason: Michael Bublé. Not even joking. And here’s why.

He was an absolute joy to work with. Oh, god forbid he be some smiley maniac muttering “Bless you and have a GREAT day!” Oh no. Never. That’s not what I mean At. All.

He was a joy to work with because we were both embittered bitches who loathed the demands of quotidian reality as a pair of baristas (well, I was a lead, now called a shift supervisor; he was a lowly barista). They asked him to be a lead, but he refused. Of course they did; he was clearly highly intelligent, had a high energy level, and people loved him. He said straight out that he didn’t want to take on any more responsibility at work than he had to; he knew his priorities were elsewhere. And this was in the 90’s, the days where everyone was supposed to throw their whole being into doing whatever banal tasks the company asked, because we were BUILDING TOMORROW! With lattes.

Oh yeah, and all the girls and half of the boys had crushes on him. Even the straight ones. He had that brooding Emo Snape thing going on without even trying, and he was both smart as a whip and funny as…there aren’t any great embittered wits around anymore, have you noticed? But there were elements of Stephen Wright about him sometimes, and an awful lot of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw in his black moods. Michael was like a cat, a sleek black cat that sits in the corner judging you.

He liked me because I was a bitch like him.

He told me he turned down the promotion and why, and said he liked, no, needed, to be able to go on auditions several times a week and was deliberately putting in the amount of work elsewhere that it took to keep a roof over his head and no more than that. He’s a good-looking fellow, so I assumed it was acting auditions, but he corrected me. I asked what kind of music he did, and he replied:

“Nothing that anyone wants to hear, apparently.”

Yeah, so next time your talented friend is thinking of pitching it all to become a middle manager at Walmart or wherever, tell him about the time Michael Bublé told his co-worker that nobody wanted to listen to his music.

Starring everyone’s favorite awkward uncle, Prince Charles, busting a move and maybe a few vertebrae in a traditional Saudi Arabian dance. Keep in mind that in Saudi the sexes cannot dance together, lest they be overcome by lust, so you might want to keep a cold shower handy while watching.

Then again, maybe not.

If he turns your crank, however (and he has turned a few in his time, must be the ears) you can try persuading any awkward man of middling height to wear this charming accessory while tripping the light or lumbering fantastic as the case may be.

Dedicated scenester and comeback aspirant Lily Allen sent a powerful visual message yesterday while attending the BAFTAs. The message confirmed long-held rumours in the celebusphere. It’s time, her outfit screamed, to take back our power, to flaunt our true nature, to throw off the disguises that have, for so long, allowed us to pass as other than what we truly are.

Addicts of Mugwump fluid are known as Reptiles. A number of these flow over chairs with their flexible bones and black-pink flesh. A fan of cartilage covered with hollow, erectile hairs through which the Reptiles absorb the fluid sprouts from behind each ear. The fans, which move from time to time touched by invisible currents, serve also some form of communication known only to Reptiles.

In those days of grey terror the Reptiles dart about faster and faster, scream past each other at supersonic speed, their flexible skulls flapping in black winds of insect agony. The Dream Police disintegrate in globs of rotten ectoplasm swepty away by an old junky, goughing nad spitting in the sick morning. The Mugwump Man comes with alabaster jars of fluid and the Reptiles get smoothed out.

The air is once again still and clear as glycerine.

And that, dear readers, is probably the most accurate description of a night and next morning at Lily Allen’s house the world has ever seen. It’s hard out here for a Reptile.

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Manolo the Shoeblogger is not Mr. Manolo Blahnik. This website is not affiliated in any way with Mr. Manolo Blahnik, any products bearing the federally registered trademarks MANOlO®, BlAHNIK® or MANOlO BlAHNIK®, or any licensee of said federally registered trademarks. The views expressed on this website are solely those of the author.